Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday September 19, 2010 @07:09PM
from the reconstruct-your-amnesia dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Just a day after adding a new game and a handful of promotions, GOG.com, a seller of classic games in a DRM-free format, has closed shop, leaving only a sparse placeholder page and a mention on Twitter that 'sometimes it's really hard being DRM-free... hard to keep things the way they are and keep management and publishers happy.' The site mentions that games purchased in the past will become accessible for downloading within the week, but there is no word on how long this will continue to be possible."
The announcement on the site's front page says, in part, "This doesn't mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await."

Oe it's an ill thought out stunt before ending beta phase (a rumor which circulates in quite a few places) - wouldn't surprise me too much, considering from where they come and how things can function here...

Or maybe Gog.com just hired a shitty accountant and he got behind on payroll. No sense jumping to conclusions before we know all the facts-- truth is, a ton of businesses fail for a ton of different reasons.

Plus, they must suck at advertising. This is the first I heard of them.

But wait... Slashbot CorrectThink tells us that 1.) advertising and marketing are bad! 2.) Musicians or writers or artists should just be successful by word of mouth and not need evil corporations to advertise, that's why their model is outdated! And 3.) game companies would just succeed if only they removed all DRM! But this was a DRM-free games company that did no advertising and marketed by word of mouth to geeks... they should have been guaranteed to never go out of business!

I'm not sure anyone has advocated advertising and marketing to be completely senseless and illegitimate means of promotion. Generally, people have a negative backlash for FALSE advertising, violations of user privacy and general badness. I'm fine with commercials and marketing campaigns as long as its clean good fun.

For your second point we are going back full circle here on the musicians and writers concept. I don't have an issue with someone making a good or great living at what they are doing nor using a

Yeah, there's an ENORMOUS amount of gray area in that, and I suspect you've not really thought about what the world would actually look like if nobody tried to tell others about their products at all, and simply relied on word of mouth or actively looking in opt-in directories (here's a hint, the first still requires at least one person to know, and the latter doesn't really work if the directory service never solicits merchants for listings or advertises to potential customers that their list exists).

I've used them a couple times in the past; its' a nice site. I forget where I heard about them, but it was either an indie games site, or while I was searching for abandonware. I might even possibly have seen a banner ad, but yeah, I haven't seen much that really shouted that they were there.

On the plus side, the games I bought from them probably won't die, unlike some others.

couldnt agree more. The slashdot crowd whine like children about DRM but when a DRM-free site appears, they ignroe it and all get their games from torrents anyway.Typical fucking hypocrites. No wonder we have DRM and no wonder it is here to stay.

yeah this smells fishy. I have been buying from them for nearly a year, and have bought more games from them than I've bought in the past 3 years because they were cheap, easy to use, and DRM free. Well it looks like I'll be keeping all my GOG installers on a portable drive just in case one of my backup discs gets scratched. man this fucking sucks!

The moral of the story there would appear to be that the cloud has its flaws, that you're reliant on a provider not going under/shutting down a service, and that if a simple "downloads always available" service can't be kept open then an "authenticate your game" service for DRM is even less likely to survive.

Indeed. I'm glad that I've been keeping my own backups of my games. They are planning on giving some option for those that purchased, but still. These sorts of things tend to make it harder for whoever tries this next to gain any customer trust.

I'm a bit curious as to the timing, in the middle of their weekly sale.

Personally, I don't get it. These old games made their money back ages ago, everyone involved has other jobs. I don't feel like I'm depriving anyone when I grab a torrent of DOS classics. Cheap doesn't compete with free when there's no moral imperative. I'd rather spend my limited funds on those making new homebrew hardware and software for classic systems.

Because DOSBox sucks the big wet titty when it comes to setting it up yourself, with lots of hit or miss crap, and compatibility mode doesn't work on x86 Ring 0 DRM? let me compare DOSBox with GoG with a game I owned and re-bought from GoG when they first offered it...Redneck Rampage. with DOSBox it was 1.-deal with Build engine patch which did NOT like x64, 2.-try different settings trying to get sound stable, 3.-have it CTD more often than not, as well as random lockups.

Now lets compare that to the GoG Redneck Rampage DOSBox experience. 1.-download game, all patches and expansions already preloaded. 2.-run install, which is "clicky clicky". 3.-play game perfectly on windows 7 x64 with no hassles.

See the difference? I have bought a bunch of older games like RR and Fallout from GoG simply because they remove all the hassles and make it all just click n' run. I only hope GoG comes back so I can load up on the older games like Blood I hadn't picked up yet. But believe me the GoG experience was well worth it, even on newer games. I bought King's Bounty: The Legend but when I switched to x64 I never could seem to get it to run (my guess, shitty DRM) but the GoG version? Ran beautifully OOTB. If any GoG developers read this, thanks. Your site was the first and often only site I went to when I was bored and wanted a new game. you WILL be missed.

Uh...I do. The vast majority of people live paycheck to paycheck and are just trying to break even.

Which is why you have given up on paying for broadband (you're typing this at the library, right?), don't have a cell phone, don't drink alchohol or eat out, only have one pair of shoes, no TV, no camera, don't by games or music or go to movies, and work a second job evenings and weekends so that you can save up some money, right?

Really, what kind of point are you trying to make? That people such as myself in this kind of situation don't deserve Any type of happiness or fun until we hit rock bottom?

I guess the point of my post is that you really do come off as an elitist asshole, and just because you might be better off than many others out there, does not at all make you a better person.

The point I am making is that most people who say they live paycheck to paycheck are in that condition because they spend everything they get, as they get it. And freqguently do so on things that they don't need. And then they complain that they don't have any money. I've had this exact converstion with people who run their air conditioning hard all summer, and heat their home to sauna temperatures all winter. Or who can't be bothered to go get a gig mowing lawns on Saturday for a year to establish a slush fund for emergencies. Or people who complain about living paycheck to paycheck, but mysteriously still manage to smoke cigarettes, or buy a latte, or get overpriced mixed green salads from Whole Foods. If you really hate not having so much as one single extra dollar in your wallet at the end of each pay period, do some extra work, or make yourself more valuable and get different work... and once you start making $50 more a week, put it in the bank instead of spending it.

I work 60-70 hours a week in IT, and work Saturdays and Sundays in other areas. I haven't taken anything resembling a vacation in over 10 years. But I'm putting some money away for later, when it really matters. What mystifies me is that you equate "happiness" with spending money. Are you unable to find any pleasure in someone else's company, or while reading a great book, or going out for a walk in the real actual outdoors, or in building something with your hands out of found materials, or teaching some kid how to write a WHILE/WEND loop, or anything else? You sound more like someone who is lacking motivation and/or imagination, or who expects that the rest of us are supposed to somehow make your life better by inflating the value of what you do (at whose expense?).

Don't give me that "elitist" crap. I work my ass off seven days a week, and give up all sorts of modest pleasures because of that. I'll suspend lumping you in with them, but you know exactly who I'm talking about: the "vast majority" (to use your words) of people who live paycheck to paycheck do so because of a lazy habit of instant gratification and total lack of discipline and drive. And even in paycheck-to-paycheck mode, they live like kings compared to people 50 years ago.

Well, good luck with your life... I try to have some fun on the way, because I could get hit by a truck tomorrow. While it's nice that my savings will go to my husband should I get hit by that truck, I also appreciate the memories we've created together while we're young and fit enough to do more than sit in our rockers and say to each other, Man, I wish I had worked more and spent less time with you while we were young!

I *could* pirate games, but I do not because it is completely dishonest. If I did any significant degree of illegal copying, I to not think that I could live with myself and would suffer guilt over the shut-down of a great site like GOG.com.

I will miss the site. I got some of their freebies, and purchased several games (most of which I have not even had the time to play yet).

Good-bye GOG.com. You were a good friend, and my first stop for games when I was bored. You will be missed. I did not gi

DRM doesn't stop piracy at all. It's not even a minor deterrent. It's not even on the radar if your intent is to steal the game. The only user who has to deal with it is the one naive enough to purchase it legally. Pirate copies are always DRM-free.

I always get irked when I see X indie game studio or whoever releases something DRM-free, and then a month or two later writes a big long-winded I-told-you-so blog post about

Most people don't go looking for a pirated version at all, they just go out and buy it. A small, but possibly significant number, have problems with the game because of the DRM. They don't, for the most part, go, "Oh DRM sucks, I won't buy another game with DRM." Instead they go, "Game Publisher XYZ sucks, I won't buy another game from them." The question is, does the game publisher increase its sales by enough to justify the cost of DRM? The other important question is, how much does the inconvenience of D

The thing is, by your very logic, DRM will never help sales. The people who wouldn't know where to look or wouldn't care to look for the pirated versions are never going to pirate anything, no matter how lax or strict the DRM; the people who are going to pirate the game will wait for a crack - which will come eventually - no matter how harsh the DRM might be. Putting ultra-restrictive DRM on a game is like putting a dozen deadbolts on a glass door: Anyone who wants in is just going to break the glass, and

You also seem to be under the impression that the publisher is essentially one entity with a singular vision and purpose, but in most corporations that simply isn't true. In any publisher of any reasonable size there is probably a very senior level manager in charge of DRM production. You can be sure as shit that he is fighting like hell to make sure that not only does the DRM stay in, that it grows in complexity as well because that means more bodies under him which leads to bigger salaries/bonuses. And

Given that the DRM solutions used by most publishers (such as SecuROM, StarForce, Safedisk etc) are produced by third parties, one assumes that producing a game with DRM is more expensive than producing the same game without DRM (both the costs to buy the DRM from a third party and the costs to integrate the DRM). Companies dont usually have teams of guys working on DRM integration (and in fact, companies like Sony probably go out of their way to make the DRM solution EASIER for publishers to integrate in the hope of getting the publishers to use their soltuion vs the other guys solution)

I think publishers like DRM because:1.It lets them continue to push towards a world where all content requires DRM (no more small guys, only big guys who can get licenses for the DRM)2.DRM can (and does) make games harder to reverse engineer (which helps with stopping cheaters and in some cases modders) and can allow the games company to use the DMCA as a stick against people cracking their copy protection to get at game data files.3.Newer DRM solutions are increasingly being aimed at stopping not just piracy but unauthorized resale of ghames (no more second hand games market)

Nope. I've bought more games from Gog.com in the last couple of years than anywhere else too; often buying games I already owned in DRM-crippled form, because having a legitimate DRM-free version was worth $5 to me.

Not because of the no DRM thing, but because all they sold was old games. Those are going to have to be budget priced, of course, and are just not as popular. They probably had trouble making much money since they didn't make a whole lot each sale (at least half, maybe more, of the price goes to the publisher) and there just weren't the numbers. this is particularity true since Impulse and Steam, the big download services, do old games too. You can find a lot of old title on them, and they add more all the time. More people will shop from them, since they already have an account.

OTOH their parent company offers for a long time, in its home market, large number of inexpensive and great older games (think anywhere between 3 and 10 USD for boxed game at retail - of course it's basically just a DVD box with thin manual inside, but that almost tends to be the norm for new releases too, anyway). Not precisely the bargain bin - it's a quite popular, continuing "series" of (re)releases; which I doubt they would do on such scale if it wasn't giving decent and stable profits. Distribution in

Not because of the no DRM thing, but because all they sold was old games. Those are going to have to be budget priced, of course, and are just not as popular.

This,

I think the most recent games they sold were before 2005, many of them were late early 90's. In addition to that many other services like Steam and Impulse sold the exact same products for pretty much the same price so the market was not only small, but highly competitive.

Not because of the no DRM thing, but because all they sold was old games. Those are going to have to be budget priced, of course, and are just not as popular. They probably had trouble making much money since they didn't make a whole lot each sale (at least half, maybe more, of the price goes to the publisher) and there just weren't the numbers.

Except according to another site, they were one of the most profitable components of their parent company. Of course that might be a lie, but they basically had to pay for a server, people to remove DRM from old software, and download bandwidth, so it wouldn't surprise me if true.

One thing I've noticed in recent weeks is a significant slowdown of the site, so either they were getting a lot more customers or switched to a less powerful server to save money... hard to tell which.

I don't think they provided enough of a value-add above and beyond the (IMHO very good) value they offered on the games. For example, DRM-free was great, and the price was right, but they didn't really play up the fact that purchasing through them rather than torrenting provided a *legal* copy to the purchaser. It may seem a rather trivial thing, but these days in which everyone is presumed to be an illegal downloader and the 'rightsholder police' can threaten lawsuits on a whim, the ability to produce valid proof of ownership is powerful. "Why, no, I did not pirate that game - in fact, here is a copy of my proof of purchase certificate (digitally signed and verifiable as authentic by downloading GoG's public verification key). As you can see, your honor, I have the right to possess a copy of the game. The plaintiff has no case." I tried a few times on the forums to advocate that they provide some sort of distinct proof of purchase, whether a signed 'digital receipt' of some sort, or even a nicely formatted pdf document that provided proof of ownership, but nobody was interested.

Other areas they might have explored: tangible media (for an extra fee) and gifting (with on-demand shipping of hard copies ready for wrapping). The former would be great for those that want a disk for backup/security purposes, or nice graphics and a case. The latter would be useful for giving 'Cousin Bob who loved Psychonauts but can't play his copy on the new PC' a cool gift for christmas that you could wrap up and put under the tree. GoG did gift certificates or somesuch thing, as I recall, but that is just no substitute for something that can be unwrapped and admired. Maybe the answer is to partner with someone like Amazon who has the infrastructure to target a broad audience and could properly sell the DRM-free message, as well as produce and ship tangible media at reasonable cost for those that want to purchase gifts.

It's starting to look like the platform's shutdown is just a marketing stunt. Good Old Games spokesman Tom Ohle told us that "as the site says, this doesn't mean GOG is dead. We will have more to share in the next couple of days." A NeoGAF poster dug up a Polish business forum, in which CD Projekt co-founder Micha Kiciski purportedly mentions a conference dated for this Wednesday, adding, "we'll post information about this soon on GOG.com (please do not panic after reading the information contained there.)" We'll keep an eye out for more info.

Personally I think they are going to change their service in some way, perhaps add a devoted client (like Steam) and perhaps introduce DRM. If so, I will be angry at the lack of transparency; the whole thing smells like a publicity stunt. If this is the case, the game I bought from them last week will be the last.

If you're right GOG is gone. Adding DRM negates the advantage of buying from them.

Indeed: adding DRM would just make them another Steam competitor... in which case, why not just buy from Steam? OK, they could have better prices, but I usually only buy Steam games when they're on sale anyway.

I suspect a lot of people will be somewhat reluctant to do business with them if they think this is good marketing.... meh

Except all my game installers are on my hard drives, so even if they are permanently gone I still have all my games; unlike something like Steam, where I lose most of my games if they go away (some don't do any DRM checks, but the rest would be toast).

If they come back and are still DRM-free, I'll still be buying from them.

What I'm getting at is: "If they think this is a good idea... what else do they think is a good idea?"

I love DRM-free content, but there is still that little lingering doubt in my mind... Do I really want to give these people my CC info?

Dunno, I've always used Paypal. So unless they started putting malware in the games there's not much to worry about.

Otherwise it seems no different to asking 'do I want to buy a bag of chips from the corner store, when it could go out of business'? If I hand over the money and get my chips, then I don't care whether it closes the door for good just after I leave.

It's not necessarily a stunt, it could be they've been negotiating with publishers/backers to keep it open and today they got a shut-it-down-now ultimatum, and are announcing their contingency plan on Wednesday.

There's no "stunt" to this. It says right in their notice that the site is ending in its "current form" and that it will eventually return. Which contrasts with Joystiq's sensationalist headline that GOG "shuts down" (also Slashdot's).

What CD Projekt actually said in the forum was that posting the notice on the current site (which IS closed and isn't just going to be reactivated) was part of a process to raise awareness of the new site that will take its place, which is pretty plain from the notice that they posted, had anyone bothered to actually read it.

Marketing yes, stunt no. This isn't Death (and Return) of Superman. They said right up front what was going to happen. Just because people glossed over the text and rushed to print a headline, well, that kind of makes the editors at Joystiq (and Slashdot) out to look like tools. Don't try to shift blame to CD Projekt for this.

The stunt is in shutting down suddenly, without warning, and, apparently, in the middle of a sale. If this was planned, it's a stunt. They could have announced ahead of time, even just a day or a week ahead of time, that they'd be shutting down for a period before reopening. Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.

Doing this suddenly produces shock and probably some panic from long-time custome

in the age of internet and digital downloads, the middleman, publisher, is the problem. not needed anymore, yet they still introduce problems into the production to consumer sequence, right in the middle. actually, in some sectors, they totally control entire sequence.

Indeed. In this time of fast data transfer, a system where one produce a master copy first and then expect to recoup the cost of the work later by selling copies of the master is broken at best. With the ease of reaching a interested public, i suspect a system where one would collect funding up front (i a example/start provided for free) and then produce and release when a goal have been reached would work just as well.

Hell, with a system like that in place, one may well see a game evolve with time rather t

Mount and Blade did something like this. The earlier you bought the game in the development cycle, the less you paid. This works fine if you are a small team and have dedicated audience and coders, or the game is not the programmers main source of income.

The problem is publicity and numbers. How many people are willing to pay early in a games development cycle, and is it enough people to fund the developers? Even if it is enough people, and you are certain they are willing to buy your game, you still need some capital to borrow to pay the developers or wait to hire developers for a short term as each monetary goal is met. And if you find a company that is willing to do this, they might want distribution rights to the game.

The main function a publisher provides for videogames is money. Games are expensive to develop. Game studios cannot always assume that financial risk. Remember that if you self develop you have to pay everyone's salaries, all the costs, while it is being developed. If it flops, you are SOL. So publishers are companies that put up the money. That is their primary function. You sell them a game idea they like, they put up the costs of developing it.

Along those lines, they function as the business side of things. A bunch of programmers might not make for the best business team. The most classic example is Duke Nukem Forever. 3DRealm had lots of money from the original Duke title so they could self publish, if they wanted to, and elected to do so. However that meant nobody was minding after them to release it. So they faffed about and delayed things and so on. Eventually it became a joke, a lot of wasted money, and ultimately their demise. In a situation with a separate publisher they could have said "No, the game is looking good as it is. You go in to crunch mode, and we ship in 9 months." Might not have been The Best Game Evar(tm) had that happened but it would have been a game, not a perpetually half-finished project.

Publishers also do marketing and distribution. If you think that is easy or unnecessary then that only exposes your ignorance of the situation. Stores are still where most sales happen (ask Stardock, they publish, develop, and sell online, they'll tell you stores still outsell online 3-4:1). Publishers make sure people know the game is coming out, negotiate with stores for shelf space and release dates, and so on.

In fact, because of the distribution, even some self funded shops use publishers. Valve funds their own development, but uses a publisher for physical distribution (Activision I think).

Also none of this is relevant to the older games being talked about. Even if you think they shouldn't have been paid for by a publisher, they were, meaning the publisher owns the rights and sets the rules.

Sadly, removing publishers would only help something like Good Old Games if you went back in time and removed them 10-15 years ago -- at which point in time, of course, they were essential because there was no way of getting games without physical media on store shelves.

Steam is a pain compared to the way GOG works/worked/used to work (?).

I'll write in the present tense, as GOG's future doesn't seem to be set in stone yet.

You get one file (granted, Psychonaut has actually three). You can download the file from a fast server.I never could get a fast, and I'm being deliberately NICE here, so > 100KB/s) download from steam, no matter what ports I opened. You can make as many backups as you want of the setup file. Installation is straight forward, and you get some bonus ma

I can only speak about the games I bought from them (something like 15 games, the oldest being either Stonekeep or Flashback, the newest one probably Psychonaut), but they all came with a GOG installer. Obviously there is an EULA to check and you can (but don't need to) change the standard install directory (defaults to "c:\program files\GOG\whateverthegameis").

No need to patch anything as those are old games. So far, they were all already patched to the latest official version.

Having purchased games from both GOG and Steam, I'd pick GOG over Steam any day. I'd argue that Steam made it more complicated, if only because they force you to install and use a client. And then it forces me to download the game again if I choose to uninstall it from my HD. GOG was a simple download and install, always. I never had to download the game again after uninstalling it, I could just burn it to DVD as is, or move it to another HD.

Why? You clearly have access to the Internet. Product activation is completely invisible and automatic. As for DRM, well, I realise some people hate it on religious grounds, but it's really not that bad.

Sure, one day in the hypothetical future Valve's servers could disappear, leaving you unable to play your

He admits to never having used steam and yet declares he will never use it.

Used, dude, not seen.

We could equally ask why most have a prejudice against dying, never having "tried it?" Of course, people generally come to that conclusion because they've witnessed it and/or heard anecdotes about it. Fact is, direct experience and/or experimentation is often a bad way to form an opinion.

Or we could try heroin together, just to be sure, right?;^)

What the GP expressed is called a "preference," as in, "I will never try sushi because I am afraid of the potential bacteria/contamination issues." A sushi fan can reassure the person of the hygienic nature of the food to no end, but the person has a reasoned aversion based on fact (uncooked food can carry food-borne illness) which is, in the view of a sushi fan, unreasonable.

Such a fan has a prejudice against facts, however, because he's conflating facts with opinion. In the GP's Steam case, "I don't like the idea of needing a network connection to acquire games," is enough. It is factual, as Steam requires it. "My catalog could be cut off arbitrarily with no remedy" passes muster, too, as it is a part of the user agreement.

These are facts.

It is your opinion that it is unreasonable to believe that these facts will come to any great losses, and you are likely to be correct, but that is not a fact, it is merely presumption.

Prejudice happens when it is a known fact that what the person believes is utterly untrue or distorted, and they don't realize it because they are unwilling to find out, or even believe accounts refuting their prejudice. I really doubt, after all these years of Steam being around, that anyone is stalking the net badmouthing Steam having never seen or understood it.

Give me a break. The GP has a preference for an alternate means of game purchase. Those options exist and he's willing to pay more for it, and that's the end of it. It isn't remotely prejudice, just because you disagree.

Sure, one day in the hypothetical future Valve's servers could disappear, leaving you unable to play your games any more. This is no different from non-DRM-encumbered games you own on physical media, which could stop working at any time due to loss of or damage to the CDs.

Wrong. there is one big difference.It['s a thing that is becoming more and more fashionable to ignore and pretend doesn't exist. It's called responsibility.

Looking after my copies of my games bought from GOG is my responsibility. I have all the tools at hand to protect against any loss of data. If one copy is lost or damaged, I have a backup copy (which I can then use to make another copy just in case I have another accident). If something happens to that data, it's my fault and my problem.

If Steam (or whatever other service) goes away or is taken away, it's someone else's fault but my problem.

There is a good amount of information suggesting that this may in fact be a marketing stunt; have a read of Kotaku's write-up: http://kotaku.com/5642141/what-happened-to-good-old-games [kotaku.com]. Personally, if this is in fact a marketing stunt, I will -never- purchase from GOG again. Lying to your customers doesn't make them want to spend their money on your products.

I guess it depends on what the stunt is. They have been pretty careful not to say that they're closing up shop or going out of business, and the emphasis on "in its current form" seemed pretty clear to me.

I bought the Fallout games from them, real sad that they're gone now (or at least, appear to be gone).

The value they added wasn't just removing DRM, but in also making the old games compatible with new operating systems. It's a pain in the ass for me to get some of my older games to work, and I'm more than willing to pay $5 to let someone else do it for me.

The official statement from the owners of GOG.com (CD Projekt) is:"Attention! We scheduled a press conference on 22nd of September, early evening. Information about this event should be soon available at GOG.com (please, don't spread panic after reading what will be posted there:). Please keep in mind, that it's going to be an on-line conference and it's going to be a very first time for us to try such thing:).

We basically closed all our schedules and we are going to send information about this event on Monday or Tuesday.

MKCDP"

It was suggested on a forum connected to the company, that this is some kind of mislead publicity stunt... Well we'll see on 22nd.

Like others have already said, this is most likely a marketing stunt for getting out of beta. Yes, they have been in beta for the last 2 years and like the message in the site says, "we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form". At no point do they really say that GoG is gone. They mention change and that you will be able to re-download the games you have bought. They also had a promo running and this "announcement" happened on Sunday, which would be highly unlikely if this was a real site closing situation. A real closing announcement wouldn't come suddenly out of the blue without any previous indications of internal or external problems that caused it, nor would they do it on Sunday when most of the workers (and boss staff) are not working.

At no point do they really say that GoG is gone. They mention change and that you will be able to re-download the games you have bought

You forgot this little part: "We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await."

How exactly do you misinterpret "we're closing down the service"? Does a landlord serve you an immediate eviction notice, and tell you that "sometimes next week you can stop by and get your things.", when he just wants to remodel the kitchen?

Some of their games simply could not be found anywhere else. Not even on TPB. They had a version of Arx Fatalis that was integrated with the latest patch that played nice with modern graphics cards. A sort of hacked patch that tries to accomplish the same thing is available, but it is hard to find and the developers claim it is buggy and unsupported. I guess it needed to be integrated into the source code directly in order to function properly. My understanding is that they worked with some of the developers directly to get their old games working on modern hardware and OSes. They made a big mistake IMO in not having a separate category for truly custom binaries that are more than just a dosbox install with tested-as-working settings. I never knew whether they were just selling a DRM free version that could be found on TPB/Emule or whether they had actually worked with a developer to modify source code or produce a custom patch. Does anyone know of a comprehensive list of all of their games that were sold with custom binaries which can't be found anywhere else? Was Arx Fatalis the only one?